


Paradox Ending: The Light of Hope

by frankannestein



Series: Lightning and Hope [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22925140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankannestein/pseuds/frankannestein
Summary: Hope triggers a paradox ending that reunites him with Lightning. Oneshot.
Relationships: Hope Estheim/Lightning
Series: Lightning and Hope [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647616
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Paradox Ending: The Light of Hope

Why did he feel like he had a live gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger?

Moreover, why couldn’t he tell at whom was it pointed? Him, or Alyssa?

“Director?”

She was waiting for an answer. She beamed, her head cocked to the side, her eyes clear and expectant the way they always were. Dear god, what was he supposed to say? Thanks, but no thanks? That, as her boss, he didn’t think that sort of behavior appropriate? That, for him, life was all about the research into the space-time anomalies rippling across Gran Pulse and an alternate power source so that mankind could finally, fully stand on its own, away from fal’Cie rule?

That, no matter how brilliant she was, how charming, or eager to help, or energetic, or adventurous, he would never feel that way for her. Could never. Because of Lightning Farron. A woman they all believed had turned to crystal inside the pillar with Vanille and Fang.

Hope covered Alyssa’s fingers with his, not managing a smile when hers brightened encouragingly.

“I don’t think this,” he said quietly, removing her hand from his sleeve, “is really what you want. Is it.”

“Why, what do you mean?” she asked, her voice going high and thin, the smile disappearing like a solved paradox. Her eyes darted from Hope’s face to their hands in growing alarm.

He took a step back. Let the cool night air flow between them. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, Alyssa. It’s late. Go home and get some rest, all right? We have a meeting in the morning.”

It hurt to watch the emotions run across her face like a recording on fast forward. Surprise, realization, rejection, disappointment, shame. Then she bowed her head, clasping her hands in front of her chest as if to hide an ugly hole put there by his dismissal. “I . . . I see. Will you tell just me one thing? Please?”

“Of course,” he answered, subdued. He owed her that much.

“Is there someone else?”

Hope almost laughed. He could feel his face settling into its familiar, unhappy lines, but the laugh bubbled in his chest. There was absolutely no answer he could give Alyssa, not when the grainy vision stored in the recovered Oracle Drive contained the answer. The vision that he watched over and over when he was alone just so he could see her again. Lightning, champion of the goddess Etro, trapped in Valhalla and forever beyond his reach. So far, only Noel had met her, and that was in Valhalla itself. Hope thought the jealousy might tear him apart.

He didn’t let it show. It was moot, anyway. The vision foretold Lightning losing her fight, not coming home.

Finally, he said, “No. There’s no one.”

“Then why?” Alyssa whispered, speaking to her hands. “Why isn’t it me?”

Her heartbreak was so genuine that he closed the distance between them without thinking, reaching out to touch her shoulder. He suspected that his assistant consistently put on an act, maybe unconsciously. She always seemed to tell people exactly what they wanted to hear, which was why everyone idolized her.

“Alyssa?” he asked.

“No, it’s nothing,” she said in a more normal voice. She shook her head so that her short blonde curls bounced. Bravely, she hitched her smile in place and danced backward, out of his reach. Bobbing a curtsey, she tilted her head to the side and gave him a cheerful wave. She was cute, there was no denying that. “Never mind, Director Estheim. It’s all right. Forget I said anything. Good night!”

Then she was gone, walking too quickly for a mind at ease but never fast enough to break into a run, leaving him alone.

So alone.

Ten years was a long time. Hope raised his face to the starry sky.

“ ‘It’s not a question of can or can’t,’ ” he quoted, closing his eyes against the cold beauty wheeling indifferently above him. “ ‘There are some things in life that you just do.’ Right, Light?”

No response. At the empty silence, Hope fought not to weep.

Snow. Sazh and Dajh. Serah and Noel. They were scattered. Either fighting against the destruction of the world, like Lightning, or simply vanished. The future was a scary place, and they were barreling straight into it with no brakes.

He began the trek back to his quarters. His boots made the rusted metal platform ring, a steady, familiar tolling. Then, when a breath of wind passed through the Paddra Ruins, he heard a soft chuckle.

“Still looking to me for answers, Hope?”

He whirled around.

“Light?” he breathed, hardly daring to believe his eyes. What with the Chaos bleeding into the world and causing paradoxes left and right, he’d seen stranger things, but nothing as impossibly beautiful as she was.

Because it was her. She was different, though. Lovelier, somehow, in an unearthly way. Now, Hope understood what Noel had meant when he’d tried to describe her. She had become a goddess, living apart from the ravages of time. A faint glow hugged her body, glinted in her rose-colored hair, on her pink lips, coruscating across her silver armor, blinding on the half skirt of white feathers that hugged her left leg. As if she was nothing more than a phantom, the glow did not touch the ground on which she stood.

She smiled secretively, a look he’d never seen on her face before.

He stumbled, only then realizing that he’d tried to move toward her, one hand outstretched. “Are you real?”

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were steady. Confident. Amused.

“How – What are you doing here?”

No answer.

“Have you seen Serah?” he blurted, his mind catching up with him. “Light! There’s so much to tell you. I –”

He hesitated, his face warming. So much, indeed. It had been ten years. Back then, she’d been like a surrogate mother to him. He’d been a hindrance to her. He knew that. But no one could go through what they had together without growing. Changing for the better. Because of her, he’d found the courage and strength to take his father’s place in the Academy and become the leader that the world sorely needed.

He’d often wondered what she would think of him as a man, a scientist, and a politician. Would things have been different if he could have met her like this instead of as an insecure, frightened boy of fourteen? The laugh bubbled up again. Right then, it occurred to him that he was actually older than she was. The idea was so strange he had no clue how he was supposed to react to it.

As a man, he was respected and admired. His research was progressing in leaps and bounds. If all went well, he would create a new Cocoon, a haven for humankind, without flapping around on a fal’Cie’s leash.

That was his dream. He’d hoped so badly that Lightning would approve. She was never far from his thoughts, for she had become his ideal, giving him a goal to work for. Now that she was here . . .

What would she think of him as a man in love with a memory?

Lightning did not move. She did not speak.

He let his hand drop. His feelings were his. He wouldn’t force them on her. Not now. Probably not ever.

Suddenly, she drew the gunblade, snapping out her arm with the ease that came from her time in the Guardian Corps. A burst of white feathers patterned the night. The old gleam of anticipation entered her eye.

“Get ready,” she said, smirking.

That was the Lightning he remembered. Hope grinned and flipped open his airwing before he turned to face their adversary. Months spent on site in Yaschas Massif had conditioned him to expect a wild animal attack at any moment. In fact, he landed the first blow. Activating the mechanism on the airwing that would freeze water particles in the humid air, he sent it spinning like a miniature snow blower. It clipped the nearest ugallu on its snout before driving into the flank of its neighbor. The pack howled, smelling blood. It moved in for the kill.

He had modified the sport boomerang after he’d lost his l’Cie powers. Unlike Serah, he could no longer cast magic. That was where AMP technology came in. While Hope caught the airwing and angled it for another throw, Lightning darted into the fray. The overture gunblade seemed real enough, slicing through fur, muscle, and bone, spitting bullets in quick succession. Lightning somersaulted through the night, the spikes at her elbows and knees serving her when a fang or claw got too close. The airwing sprayed ice as it spun around her. Working together, it didn’t take them long to thin the pack enough to send the survivors fleeing.

With a practiced flick, Hope folded the airwing and returned it to its pouch.

“Nice,” Lightning said, her voice a purr of appreciation. She sheathed the gunblade at her hip.

Pleased, he laughed. “It’s like a dream, Light. I feel like I’m dreaming.”

He didn’t say it, but he also felt fourteen years old, awkward and pathetic.

He sobered. Lightning was beyond his reach. She would never belong to anyone. Which was okay. He may have fallen in love with what he remembered of her, but he had never desired to possess her.

“It’s not a dream,” she said, and all at once he realized what was different about her. The anger that used to drive her was missing, although the grief was still there. She was calm, but far from at peace.

Fate had dealt her a hard hand to play.

“I’ve been given a chance,” she said, half to herself, half as if answering his unspoken thought. “Etro has given this opportunity to me.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She looked up at him, solemn. “This is a paradox, Hope.”

“You mean something changed,” he said in sudden alarm. His mind took the idea and ran with it, presenting all the possibilities to him. “It altered the timeline again. Something . . . that I did?”

“It was your choice,” she said, and then approached him. She held out her gloved hand. “Yours, and mine.”

Hope didn’t stop to think. He saw the longing and loneliness in her eyes, and he took her hand. Her small, strong fingers curled around his. The last time he’d grabbed her hand, thoughtlessly, as a child, it had been bigger.

She pulled, and the ground fell away. Swirling Chaos engulfed him. He could hear thousands of voices, uncomfortably sounding like only a few, including himself, talking endlessly. He could see nothing; smell nothing; feel nothing except the pressure of her fingers, and he held on for dear life.

“Valhalla,” Lightning murmured an eon later. Without him quite knowing how it happened, they were standing on the balcony of a castle, or perhaps it was a temple, staring down at a beach littered with masonry, at a black ocean made up of blue light. A paradox in and of itself. “Time does not touch its shores.”

It sounded dull and monotone, like something she’d said many times before.

“Does this mean that I’ve disappeared, too?” Hope asked. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. There was still so much work to do. So many people were relying on him. Had laid all of their hopes for a future on him.

Lightning spread her hands on the rail, still watching the surging, yet stationary surf. “Yes. And no.”

“Light,” he said, speaking more sternly than he meant to. He wasn’t a child anymore. “What does that mean?”

“It means that we have no time. There is no Time.” She turned to him, her face sad, her eyes impatient. “When you wake up in your tomorrow, you won’t be here. And I won’t be there. I want to make the most of this time.”

She was so close, brushing aside his hair, her fingertips lingering on his cheek. “Please,” she said. “No more questions.”

He caught her wrist. Not forcefully – she could break his arm in a blink if she wanted. Some things would never change. But her touch was electric, making breathing difficult, and he needed to think. “Why? Why me?”

“Hope,” she said affectionately, and she smiled. A sincere smile that lit up her whole face. “Do you think I haven’t been watching you all this time? You’ve been working so hard to change the past. For Serah. For all of us.”

Then she frowned and shook her head. Muttered, “I’ve never been good at speeches. Look at it this way. You’ve got your eye on the future, and I’ve got your back. I will always be right here.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

His entire body responded in an instant. Lightning’s mouth was warm, soft, and insistent; her armor, by contrast, hard and unyielding against his chest. He kissed her back, befuddled by the buffeting of the Chaos that surrounded them, all of his uncertainty and inexperience pushed to the side. He’d found his answer.

He did not wish to possess her because he belonged to her, body and soul. If she abandoned him again, then so be it. If he was there because she needed companionship and a brief moment of feeling human, and it didn’t matter with who, then . . . it didn’t matter. He would deal with it. He always had.

Hope buried his fingers in her hair with a sort of desperate hunger, holding her to him. It felt so right, as if they’d done this many times before.

For a second or two, he had enough presence of mind to analyze the situation, concluding that they may well have, in this realm where time did not flow. But when Lightning whimpered a little and parted her lips, he soon forgot it.

The Chaos swelled, making him lightheaded. He was not on Gran Pulse, and Valhalla was letting him know it in the strangest ways. After what seemed like an eternity, his hands were touching more than cold, silver armor and supple leather – or, rather, less. It was Lightning herself, her skin and her curves, soft as only a woman could be, hard as the warrior she’d always been. Likewise, the balcony was gone, but where they were, he couldn’t say. It was dark and light at the same time. It was kisses and embraces, warmth and closeness, taste and scent and simple touch. It was sweat and pounding hearts and gasping breath. It was pleasure. Instinct. Exertion. It was Lightning, opening up to him, accepting him, a perfect give and take as old as the world, belonging, for the moment, to them alone. It was his name on her lips, her body in his arms. It was a wave that crested and broke, carrying them along, a single entity.

It was love. His for her, and hers for him.

* * *

Morning light poked brittle fingers through the blinds across his window and stabbed at his eyelids.

Hope groaned and rolled over. Scrubbing the heel of his hand into his eye, he groped for his clock, wondering about the time. It felt like he hadn’t slept at all.

He nearly dropped the clock. It was ten in the morning! He scrambled to get out of bed, entangling himself in his sheets in his haste. He’d missed the meeting, Alyssa must be frantic –

Wait. Alyssa?

At the thought of his assistant, an icy calm settled over him. He gazed blankly at his tie clip on the nightstand. Beams of sunlight hit it, so hard-edged and real they had the power to make him bleed.

He couldn’t remember where he’d been last night after he’d spoken with Alyssa. Was it a dream that he was trying to remember? All he could recall were bits and pieces: The fire of lips on his skin. A woman’s voice, saying his name. A jumble of heat and passion, which had ultimately consumed him.

Through it all, a phantom with rose-colored hair haunted him. Took his hand and –

A text from Alyssa, probably not the first, sent urgent beeping through his quarters, derailing his rather embarrassing train of thought. Of course, it was a dream! One best forgotten as soon as possible if he wanted to look anyone in the eye again. Snatching up a pair of pants, he hopped around with his hair in his eyes, yanking the pants up to his hips while trying to type a coherent response one-handed.

When paradoxes were solved, time rewrote itself, and memories changed suit. It would be as if the paradox had never existed. Hope was relying on Serah and Noel to unwind the true past that Caius had twisted into countless knots, making falsehoods out of their own memories.

He wouldn’t let them fight alone. It was time to get out there and find a way to bring Lightning home. For all of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Motomu Toriyama, Lightning Farron’s creator, said that Lightning would never belong to anyone because that kind of love would weaken her. To me, I agree only in part with him, because I believe that there is more to love than a possessive love. He did, however, intentionally leave the trilogy’s ending wide open – he would not come out and say Light and Hope found love because that would make it irrevocably true, but he couldn’t deny it, either. There is always hope.


End file.
